Stalking the Cooperative Vulture.

I've been enjoying a lot of outdoor activities lately. My son and I head to the high country often to go hiking. My wife and I have been doing a good deal of kayaking locally. And of course when no one else has the leisure time to go with me, I go off by myself. I take advantage of most of those days to go hiking, generally within a drive of anywhere from half an hour to as much as three hours.

Today I fell back on the old standby activity, hiking at Crowders Mountain State Park. My main purpose was to hike to the summit of Crowders to see if I would have the opportunity to photograph Turkey vultures. They're one of the most common large birds around, and they use the cliffs and thermals around the summit to launch themselves into the sky to scan for the scent of carrion.On a sunny day it's hard to miss them at either of the two peaks in the park, Crowders and Kings Pinnacle.

I have to say, it was a hot day for hiking. I arrived at the trailhead at about 10:00 am. The lot was about 2/3 full, and it's a vast parking area. There is very good reason that local hikers refer to it as "Crowded Mountain". On some days you can encounter as many as 100 people arriving at the summit every hour or so. Today wasn't quite that busy, but nearly so.

After reaching the top and toweling all of the sweat off of me, I staked out a shady spot at the edge of a cliff and began to take landscape photos and to scan the area for signs of vultures. One of my friends, writer/photographer Michael Hodges had suggested a lens to me: a Canon 24mm pancake lens. He told me that photographs taken with it would "pop", and he wasn't kidding. It captures crisp, colorful, brilliant images. This was the first time I'd used it other than to take a couple of test photos. Michael was spot on.

I stayed on the summit for about three hours taking photos, drinking lots of water, and enjoying the views. The people arrived and left at a steady pace. Sometimes it got quite noisy, then the voices and music would subside as the numbers of people dwindled. (I never have figured out why anyone would bring music with them on a hike. I find the idea pathetic.)

Over the course of my time there I took well over 200 photographs of the crew of Turkey vultures who passed in front of and above my patch of rocky cliffside. I think I'll salvage about a dozen images good enough for me to add to my online portfolio of photos that I sell through some online purveyors of stock photos.  Every month I make a little more than I did the month before. It has become my part-time job. A job, for once, that's fun (aside from writing).

Say what you will, they're actually quite the majestic bird in flight.

I don't know if this bird is just old, in the midst of molting, or the victim of a tussle. It seems healthy and flew and cruised the thermals as well as the others. But it looked rough.

Aside from the Great blue heron, the Turkey vulture is my favorite bird to photograph.

Michael was right. That lens makes the image really stand out.

Boulders Access

Some years ago quite a bit of acreage was added to Crowders Mountain State Park. This is generally the place I go when I can't find the time to head to the real mountains in the western side of the state. Instead I'll take a 30-minute drive south and hit the monadnocks we call Crowders Mountain and Kings Pinnalce.

However, the fact that the park is so close to a large urban area means that it has a tendency to be crowded, even on weekdays. For me, the park is a hit or miss opportunity. I rarely see much in the way of wildlife there (outside of turkey vultures), so I don't visit it for wildlife photography. What I do head there for is to see some unbroken forest patches and to have some vertical relief to hike. One of the peaks (Kings Pinnacle) can give give you almost one thousand feet of climb from base to summit. Alas, I tend to have to share the peak with scores of other people--sometimes hundreds--so I rarely get the chance to find any solitude there.

Today, though, I decided to finally visit what is called the 'Boulders Access' area of the park. I'm not sure how long that section has been opened, but for me it was a new experience. I got out my map of the park and found out how to get there from I-85 and drove over. I figured, from my experiences with the main part of the park, that I'd be hiking with a couple of dozen other people moving up and down the trails. To my surprise, the entire parking lot was empty when I arrived. In addition, during the 2.5 hours that I spent hiking the Ridgeline Trail and scrambling around on the boulders for which the area is named, I didn't see anyone else. I didn't hear anyone else. At one point I heard a couple of dogs barking from 300 feet below on the Piedmont farmland, but not a sign of another person.

One more thing that I liked about this part of Crowders is that it's far enough away from I-85 that I couldn't hear the drone and roar of that superhighway. There were times when all I could hear was the wind in the trees and songbirds singing away. That was also very cool.

While I had no plans to do any rock scrambling, a couple of the giant boulders had routes that were easy enough that I could resist the temptation to climb them. I was very, very careful, though. I'll be 62 years old in four days, so I know my years of tossing my body to risk should be far behind me. Especially considering how isolated I was with no other hikers on the trail. But I did it and had a good time. Too much caution makes a man into a coward, I reckon.

The big-ass boulder right across from one of the big-ass boulders I climbed.

The office and rest room. The offices were closed, but the rest rooms were open. The big parking lot was utterly empty except for my truck.

After some rock scrambling I took a break for lunch and to re-hydrate.

The view from atop one of the really big boulders. If you embiggen this photo you will see a low blue line on the horizon--some of the real mountains far to the west of us.

I climbed up there, and then I had to climb down.

Relocating An Old Hiking Destination.

I relocated an old hiking destination. See video posts for details.

Hiking up to find the old, lost location.

Hanging out on the isolated cliff, then hiking back down.

Crowded Mountain

It only takes me about twenty to twenty-five minutes to drive from the house to Crowders Mountain State Park. Over the decades that I have lived here it is the park where I most often end up when I feel like hiking on steep terrain but don't have the time to head for the real mountains.

So it was today when I took my second trip there in two weeks.

Today I hiked to the top of King's Pinnacle. It's the highest mountain in the park at just a tad under 1800 feet above sea level. Yeah, I know. Pretty pathetic even when compared to a park like South Mountains. But the summit does stand over 900 feet above the surrounding terrain and there are cliffs all around the top, so it's an impressive little mountain.

One thing about Crowders Mountain State Park is that I never really see any wildlife. The only creature I can expect to see are Turkey buzzards. Other than those, the only wild animal I have ever seen in the park was an otter. This was really strange because there is almost no water there...just a couple of small streams and a very small man-made pond. What this otter was doing in this dry, rocky terrain is a mystery. It crossed the Pinnacle Trail in front of me, paused very briefly, and hurried along. I suppose it was headed for a decent creek or river somewhere and was just passing through.

I think the reason I never see any wildlife there is because of why the park is affectionately known as "Crowded Mountain". Since it's so close to Charlotte and Gastonia, a lot of people go there to hike. On a busy day you will encounter hundreds of people. This was a mid-week hike for me and I still met up with well over twenty other hikers. So don't go there expecting anything like solitude. You won't find it, unless you decide to leave the trails and go bushwhacking through the woods.

All in all I had a good time today. Climbing up there was a decent little workout. The wind was brisk and the skies were thinly overcast and the temperatures were very mild. It was a fine day to be out in the forests climbing mountains.

There are a butt-load of rocks in that park.

They're not kidding. It seems hardly a year passes by without someone falling and getting killed on the cliffs on King's Pinnacle and Crowders Mountain.

This is the most popular overlook on King's Pinnacle. Not quite the summit, but it does offer a view of the high mountains far to the west on a clear day. You can even spot the Black Mountains from there when the conditions are right.

King's Pinnacle. Good for an infusion of hiking upward.

Monadnock

I went to visit an old, familiar park today--Crowders Mountain State Park. It's one of the places I hit when I want to see some forests and steep slopes without driving for two hours. Twenty-five minutes in agreeable traffic will find me at the parking lot and on my way down a trail leading to the top of a mountain.

Of course "mountain" is relative. There are two major summits in the park: Crowders Mountain and King's Pinnacle. Both are composed of quartzite caprock, which is why they are there--all softer material has long ago eroded away and been washed down the Piedmont to the sea. Crowders Mountain stands about seven hundred feet above its base, and King's Pinnacle rises a bit over nine hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. That's probably not enough for either to officially bear the title of mountain. But we are comfortable calling them that.

Another nickname for the peak is "Crowded Mountain". Lying close to both Gastonia and Charlotte, it gets a lot of visits. Even on a mid-week morning I encountered dozens and dozens of climbers heading to and from the peak.If I needed to reminded (I did not), I recalled why it's almost impossible to seek solitude there. Many hikers, and many hikers with their dogs.

I put in about four miles on the trails, tramped about on the rocks, and headed back home. It was nice, but really made me realize why I prefer our bigger mountains and more isolated trails farther west.

Even the quartzite eventually gives way before erosion and gravity.

Where I reclined and ate lunch at the top of the mountain.

An abandoned mill store across the street from the Crowders Mountain Golf Course.

Monadnocks!

We had a really weird day. So weird that I'll have to write about it. Just some other time.

In the interim:

Monadnocks! What are they? And how does Mother Nature make them?

North Carolina has a number of monadnocks. In a nutshell, a monadnock is an isolated mountain, usually standing as an area of relatively high relief and surrounded by a large area of relatively low relief. Most monadnocks are formed because they consist of tough rock that is surrounded by soft material. The soft stuff is carried down slope to the sea, while the tough rock remains, eventually revealing itself and standing in some cases as a mountain.

The term is named for Mount Monadnock in NEW HAMPSHIRE (I had it listed as in Vermont...DUH!). We have a number of impressive monadnocks here in North Carolina, and quite a few of them are so special that the state has protected them as official state parks. Thus, we have Crowders Mountain State Park, Pilot Mountain State Park, and Hanging Rock State Park. Most monadocks are so isolated that they don't have an active aquifer associated with them. But Hanging Rock is actually part of a complete range of monadnocks (called the Sauratown Mountains) that have their own systems of streams.

Last year I visited Hanging Rock State Park, so here is your geology lesson in photos and video. Enjoy.

This formation is part of a huge cliff face called Cooke's Wall. Visible from the famous summit called Hanging Rock, it is proof that a race of space-faring apes once colonized Earth.

I caught this view of Hanging Rock on the hike to the summit.

A great view from the top. What looks like a road below is actually the very wide and graded trail leading to the park's signature mountaintop.

Looking up at the park's namesake: The Hanging Rock itself.

 

Although the quartzite capstone that created the range of monadnocks is tough, as you can see, water eventually has its way with the stuff.

The State of North Carolina has lavished much attention and infrastructure on the park. Here is part of the very nice and complicated trail that leads down to the park's most spectacular waterfall (one of several in the park).

I like the waterfalls in the park. They're all located down in cool, shady grottoes.

King's Pinnacle View

Kings Pinnacle inside Crowders Mountain State Park is the closest mountain to my house. I go there as a retreat of last resort when I can't run off to the real high country farther west. The park is one of North Carolina's largest state parks, and the highest point on the mountain was outside the borders of the park for many years. Finally, though, the state worked a deal with the family who owned a vast tract of land that included the long ridge that runs from Crowders Mountain all the way to the South Carolina border. Rangers in the park have told me for years that there is a trail planned to lead from the top of Crowders Mountain all the way to Kings Mountain State Park in South Carolina. But I've never heard that the trail has been completed or officially dedicated.

Click to embiggen.

The mountain is a classic monadnock. Composed of quartzite capstone, it has resisted erosion while the soil around it has been carried off to the Piedmont and coast farther east. Sadly, you can't really enjoy anything like a wilderness experience in the park due to the fact that there is so much development around it. You can pretty much always hear motor vehicles roaring along on I-85 to the west. And you can see all sorts of construction from the summit ridges. But, as I said, it'll do if you're desperate to just be in the forest and to take a walk up a steep slope to an impressive overlook.

And, of course, every time I go to the rocky viewing site near the very top of the mountain, I always take the time to make a goofy photograph that I stitch together to scare my friends and family.

Three of me! Yow!